Those of the Light & Dark

by Rob Heinze

  Alone, his sadistic mind added happily.

  There were no houses around. The street on which he stood looked to be a large commercial strip. He saw a large Circuit City, its lights dark, next to a Sports Authority. The quickly approaching night forced him to decide on the Sports Authority. He went across the insanely wide street on his bike, and never had a street seemed so large to him.

  The front doors to the store were shut but not locked. It took him a good effort to get them apart, pulling outwards until his face turned vibrant red. He got inside and they thumped shut behind him, trying to bite off slabs of his ass.

  The store was dark. He could see hulking shapes and shadows which he suspected to be clothing racks. He took out a large candle that Ray had given him from his backpack and lighted it. It caught and sent frantic light around the store. The light did little good.

  He left his bike near the door and walked into the store, going slowly, suddenly afraid of all the shadows and what might be hidden within them.

  He had no idea that someone was watching him.

  2

  That someone was actually outside in the darkness with another someone. They had spotted Charley coming down the Turnpike from their vantage point on the roof of a local building.

  “When are we going in?” The girl asked.

  She was young, just a few months over nineteen. She looked young too. Her eyes were a pale blue, and the color was draining from her dyed blonde hair so that the brown roots were starting to show.

  “Soon,” the man said.

  He was a thick-voiced and thick-bodied man. His chin was square and in the center there was a depressed dimple. His hair was cut tight and sanely to his head, though it was slowly starting to grow wild. He spoke softly, quietly, and often didn’t say anything at all.

  He is too quiet, she often thought.

  Sometimes she would talk and talk and he would say nothing. Only nod and smile and smile and nod, but more often than not he didn’t even smile. She didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  They watched from across the street. They saw Charley’s pale orange light glowing softly inside the store. It moved mysteriously like the hovering luminescence of a ghost. The girl, whose name was Eve, looked over at the man, whose name was John. His eyes were focused. She could not understand John’s eyes. Sometimes it seemed as if they were trying to conceal something housed back in his brain along the short distance of his optical nerve, as if, by not acting distant, they would reveal all his secrets.

  She liked him. She really did. If she didn’t have him here to protect her, she might have gone crazy by now. He had found her crying in an alley, too afraid to move, and they had been together since. He rarely spoke about what had happened to him. She knew (or thought she did) that she had been in a car accident. That was the only thing she could remember: that she had been in a car. After that, she remembered waking up, alone, in this place.

  “I think we’ll wait till daylight,” John said suddenly.

  “Why?”

  “If we go in now, we’ll scare the shit out of him.”

  Eve looked around nervously. “What if Those of the Dark show up?”

  “We haven’t seen them since we left Hoiser,” he said.

  That was the town they had spent a week in, utilizing a nice house. Those of the Dark had come, and they had been forced to flee.

  “We’ll wait outside all night?”

  “Yes. What the hell is wrong with you?” He looked at her, and for a minute she saw what was behind his eyes. She shivered and shrank away from him.

  “Sorry,” she whispered, looking down.

  He looked back to the store. The light inside had vanished, probably because Charley had sunk into the deep back of the store.

  We’ll wait, he thought.

  On his waist there was a knife strapped to his belt. He had used it once, before he had met Eve. He had met another man in this no-world, a man who had not been…not been right. He would use it again, if Charley was like that man.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Where? What if he comes out?”

  “We’re going to sleep outside the building,” he said. “We’ll know if he comes out.”

  She followed him in a wide arc around the street until they approached the building’s side. She took her backpack off and set down the comforter that they had found in a Bed Bath N’ Beyond weeks ago. It was filthy, but it was still better than sleeping on the ground. She remembered the house in Hoiser, where they’d had a bed. It had been a huge king bed and the doorways had strange, old designs on the casings. It was that large bed on which John had taken her virginity.

  She looked up at him as he sat with his back against the wall of the store. He had taken out that knife he carried and was staring at it blankly. He did that often. He would take the knife out and just look at it long and hard. His face would be blank, unreadable, and she wondered what he saw. Maybe he was just scared like she was—afraid that he might actually have to use that knife.

  She put her jacket on the ground for a pillow rest. She also took the lighter blanket out for warmth. It wasn’t bone numb but there was still a nip in the air. She had actually grown used to sleeping outside a bit, with the exception of the constant threat from Those of the Dark. She snuggled in close to John, wrapping her arms around his legs. He didn’t even look down at her; he went on staring at the knife. All around them, in this strange no-world, silence waited with them for the approaching dawn.

  3

  Charley set up the candles in the far back of the store, for no reason except that it made him feel somewhat more comfortable being away from the doors. He set a ring of candles around himself so that most of the general area was bright. Since he had awoken in that abandoned house’s basement, nothing had been normal. This was no exception: he was in a retail store, alone, and getting ready for bed. He could almost laugh. But he didn’t.

  “It’s not so bad,” he said to himself, and he was slightly unnerved by the comfort his own voice gave him.

  He had garnished his little area with a sleeping bag to lie on, and one to rest his head on. He had also taken a metal bat from the baseball section, just in case.

  “It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt,” he said, smiling.

  He had no idea why he said that. The candles burned and lighted the empty store with low light. One of the candles was scented. It reminded him of Sarah; she had loved candles. He couldn’t place the smell, but judging by the color it was probably some spiced aromatic—like spiced pumpkin or spiced apple.

  “I wonder what Ray’s doing?” He asked himself.

  The man was probably settling down for dinner. Speaking of which, Charley was hungry. Ray had given him some canned goods and had even thrown in a can-opener, but Charley didn’t want to use all of that stuff now. He got up from his make-shift bed and took a candle. He walked the vacant store, shadows shifting at his approach. He headed to the front of the store, hoping to find something to chow on.

  He found only nutrition bars. He kept looking. He supposed that, if he had to, he would eat those bars, but he didn’t really want to do it. He had a friend back in college who used to eat that stuff by the pound. When he broke wind, he could empty whole rooms.

  Doug, Charley had told him. That’s not normal to have gas like that. Gas is supposed to smell, Doug had said. Not like that, he had replied.

  One time they had gone to this party at a frat house, and the house had been so crowded that they had barely been able to move. With people pushing and shoving, mashing them into a human jelly mold, Doug must have let one rip, because a loud groan went up from the crowd. The stench was horrendous, and Charley had spun to face Doug, who had this sheepish look on his face. The room cleared out. Two years later, without any pledges, that fraternity had closed that chapter.

  That had become their joke: Doug being responsible for that frat’s chapter closing.

  It was hard to believe that things like partie
s had once seemed important, when a few minutes ago he had been trying to find a place to sleep. He spotted a row of the good stuff, the good candy bars, and he grabbed a bunch of Snickers, Hershey Bars, and M&Ms (the peanut kind). He continued his circuit of the store. By the time he had gotten back to his blanket, over an hour had passed. As he lay down, he thought about Ray and what the man believed to be their current situation. A coma. It seemed like the only plausible possibility. Except—

  “It’s too real,” he said to the store. His voice rose up and up.

  However, if some Armageddon had happened, wouldn’t there be more destruction? Wouldn’t the bridges and tunnels out of NYC have collapsed? Wouldn’t stores lie smoldering in ruins? None of it made much sense. No matter where he was or what had happened to him, he didn’t know how to awake.

  Those of the Light…and Dark.

  Thinking of that made him remember the dream with those haunting shapes. He remembered Those of the Light and tried to imagine seeing Those of the Dark. Suddenly the store seemed too big, but he didn’t want to move, so he went under the sleeping bag like a child and did something he hadn’t done since his parents used to make him go to Church—

  He prayed.

  * * * * *

  He knew that he was dreaming and he knew that he wasn’t really back in Queens. He was standing across the street from the house which Raymond Chandler, possible stroke-sufferer, called home.

  Something was wrong. There was a certain slant of light that tumbled upon the house—such a glare that made the whole scene jar on his eyesight like an almost inconspicuously flickering light. You know it’s there, but when you look hard, you cannot see it flicker.

  What is that? He wondered.

  He stood for a while longer, and when he tried to move, he couldn’t. His feet were glued to the cement sidewalk. There was no one around; the entire world had emptied. As he watched, panic began to take hold of him. He had no idea why; there was just this feeling brewing inside that told him, sanely and rationally, that the house was in trouble and anyone in it was too!

  He was correct.

  They came out of the shadows. Those of the Dark. They appeared to come from everywhere. They secretly approached the house, leaving thick, leech-like trails of black no-color in the air. His stomach dropped and his testicles rose. He felt a burning need to urinate and run—or run and urinate.

  That was when the front door opened and Raymond Chandler, formerly of Connecticut, father of Sarah (but not Charley’s Sarah), cheerily stepped out.

  His glasses caught a wink of sun. He stretched and yawned, just a Happy American Neighbor out to face another day.

  Oh. Oh, God. Ray! Ray—

  “Look out!!” He yelled.

  Ray scratched at his head, apparently deaf to Charley.

  I’m not here—he doesn’t know I’m here, and those…those things are going to fall on him.

  They were moving in closer now, black smudges that fouled up the whole area like blight on fresh fields. He tried to move, to run, to warn Ray, but his feet were cemented to the ground.

  Fuck! Come on!

  They were on the roof, sliding down, crawling towards the unwitting man like demented ants.

  “Ray!!!! LOOOOOOOOOOK OUT!!!!!!!”

  Ray had come down the steps and was bending over to pick up a newspaper. He yawned again, smiled, and turned back to the house. And stopped. Stopped cold. Ray saw the shapes, hesitated, and then tried to run away from the house. The scene that unfolded was awful: one of the smudges reached out and grasped Ray’s arm. It yanked, its no-color staining Ray’s skin, and when it was finished yanking, it held Ray’s arm. Blood exploded out from Ray’s shoulder in a geyser. The man began to scream—scream so loudly that it literally stopped Charley’s heart.

  Those of the Dark ripped at Ray. Each piece they ripped off, they shoved into their bodies—or what passed for bodies—as if consuming them. Soon, there was only a torso and a head (somehow still hovering in midair), and still Ray screamed and screamed, screamed until they took his head and engulfed it into the darkness of their bodies.

  They turned to Charley, insatiable, and suddenly they were soaring towards him—

  4

  Charley came awake in a hot panic. His heart throbbed in his chest, his head ached, and sweat was pouring off his body. It was too hot, so hot—

  He paused and looked around. The store was too bright…?

  “Oh, shit,” he mumbled.

  There was a wild blaze burning around the entire store. It had taken the clothes racks and was trailing across the floor on what remained of a throw rug. Charley had no idea how the fire had started. Here was what he didn’t know: in his fitful sleep, his leg had kicked out and knocked a candle over. That candle, still burning, had rolled across the floor where it came to rest underneath a clothing rack. It sat there patiently, licking at the material until it caught. It didn’t take long for the blaze to prosper.

  The smoke was thickening in the air as he watched. Terror flooded his blood, and he sat dumbfounded for a long time. There was a loud pop as the fire consumed something, and it startled him into action. He got to his feet quickly and searched for his stuff. He grabbed his backpack and clumsily put his shoes on.

  How could it be so hot?

  He ran down the length of the store, coughing now, and to his horror he learned that the front entrance was blocked; the blaze had migrated down the entire front of the store.

  It’s okay, he thought. There’s a back entrance. There has to be for shipping.

  He turned and ran, moving down one of the aisles. But he didn’t get very far. The heat from the fire had compromised the shelves which stood well over Charley’s head. Not half-way down the aisle, they came crumbling down, golf clubs and golf balls and everything else that Sport’s Authority kept in the golf aisle. He looked up just in time to catch a barrage of trinkets in his face. Pain flashed across his brain. He stumbled and fell. The shelves cascaded on him and buried him. Hot darkness filled his vision, and when he tried to move, he couldn’t.

  Oh, no.

  Sarah—

  5

  They had made love—but she knew that love was truly not what they had made. After John had stared at the knife and utterly ignored her, after she had become too needy for affection, she had asked him if he wanted to…to do it. He had obliged her. They kissed a bit, but mostly John didn’t like to kiss. He took her clothes off quickly and grabbed her breasts hard with his firm hands, his rough fingers brushing her nipples and making her tingle. He liked to bite them—the flesh of her breasts, not the nipples. Then her pants were off and her panties and his hands ran along her body, their feel like the coarse, sand-papery feel of a cat’s tongue.

  He didn’t waste any time; he was inside of her, and there was pain. He always told her that she wasn’t wet enough, but she didn’t really know how to get wet—she didn’t know this was not normal. So John would use his saliva and then he would penetrate her again, and it would feel a little better. It didn’t hurt as badly as it used to; the first time had been so bad she’d cried. John hadn’t lasted long at all, and afterwards he had apologized and he had even held her for a moment and told her not to cry. He had felt guilty, for some reason, and in that brief moment, she thought that she could love the man if he truly opened up to her.

  But that was the last time she saw any emotion in him.

  He had been easier with her in the beginning, but now his thrusts were harder and deeper. He wasn’t so long that it hurt her, but his waist bashing against her waist made her body—her mind, even—hurt. Tonight had been no exception. He had bashed her, the sound of flesh-on-flesh echoing in the still night. She had watched him, watched him as he leaned above her, but his eyes were closed; he never opened them before his climax. Once he had opened them and something she would never forget had happened: she had felt him go soft almost instantly. He had slipped out of her and couldn’t re-enter.

  There had been a quick smack, once on he
r cheek, and then he had been sitting against the wall of the building with the knife of his hand, and she was holding her face in stunned shock. She had sat alone and watched him, watched him, and he had rotated that knife slowly and reverently. It had stung where he’d smacked her. What was worse was the loneliness she’d felt. There he was, right there, across from her—and the fucking loneliness had hurt so much.

  She had crept across the blanket timidly, no more than a mouse, and when she got there she had put a hand on his bare leg.

  He had pulled away, scowling at her, and she had begged.

  “Please, John,” she had said, choking back tears.

  And her hand had reached under his legs for the limp penis that hung between them, and she had massaged it and rubbed it, and he had put his leg down and looked over at her, shaking his head, no love in his hard blue eyes. She had seen it, God, she had seen it! But she couldn’t see it! Why couldn’t she see it?

  “Please,” she had whispered, moving in closer to him.

  She kissed his thigh, moving up it, looking up at him with her imploring blue eyes. They’d shimmered with tears, with loneliness, and when she took him in her mouth, he had begun to grow hard again. She had looked up as she performed fellatio, and his eyes were closed hard, so hard that crow’s feet dented their corners, and she found herself wondering if he might go limp if he opened his eyes and saw her looking at him.

  When it was over, she had wanted to gag but didn’t want to disappoint him. He was limp almost immediately after his ejaculation, and he stood and walked over to the street and looked up at the sky, his butt flexing with each forward step. She had sipped at a bottle of Coke to wash out that taste as she had watched his back.

  Love me. Please love me.

  He had stood there for a long time, back to her, and then she saw the steaming yellow stream falling in a parabolic arc to the gutter. That was in my mouth, she had thought. And she had begun to cry, averting her eyes from him, pulling her legs into a fetal position. She had felt like that gutter into which John now pissed.